Eternally Retold Chapter One
by Facetious Sage
Summary: A long SC story began before SCIV came out and still being worked on. It answers questions I've had about the series and while it focuses early on OCs, I do have some cast members coming in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

It was, without a doubt, the ugliest blade that Steve Decker had ever seen.

It was a fencing sword, but not quite a rapier. The blade was almost three feet long, and the whole thing weighed a bit more than one and half pounds. Despite this, the blade itself was somewhat stiffer than a rapier and protected by a large bell guard. Steve identified it immediately as an epee blade, a more modern variant of traditional fencing blades that had begun to be seen in the late 17th century. He was familiar with this type of weapon from years ago when he had taken a fencing class in college.

It wasn't that it was an epee that struck him as particularly ugly. It was the material that it was forged with. At first, Decker had thought the blade had accumulated an enormous amount of sediment, but upon closer inspection, it appeared that the weapon was actually comprised of the stuff. It resembled nothing less than bone and metal fused together. The color of the material ranged in various hues of red and brown, simulating the look of petrified flesh that had refused to decay.

This was definitely not a traditionally made blade, and certainly not one that was designed for formal bouts. Its design and material indicated this was a weapon that was meant to be used, and not a decorative ceremonial blade.

While it was rough in texture, the prick on his finger he got when running it down the length of the sword warned him that even the "fleshy" parts were quite sharp. Getting stabbed by this (and the design of the epee made it a piercing weapon as opposed to a slashing weapon) would be like getting stabbed with a corkscrew.

He pulled the blade out of the box, causing small bits of packing material to settle by his feet, and struck a pose. He was a big man, built along the lines of a football player, which made the thin sword seem less intimidating in size. He cut through the open air a few times, testing it.

Darren Reynolds watched all this in a bemused silence. He had placed an ad for an estate sale, and Decker was the first one who had looked beyond the first few boxes. He wasn't exactly happy having strangers traipse around his grandfather's house, and had set everything up in the large foyer to take advantage of the higher ceilings and good lighting that streamed in from above, as well as to keep people from seeing the really nice stuff he planned on keeping.

The estate, if you could call it that, was not a very extensive one. His grandfather had passed away, leaving him as the sole heir to a modestly sized fortune. The trouble was that his grandfather had been somewhat eccentric, and had been fond of collecting bits and items of junk; souvenirs from his travels over the world.

The only thing really worth much had been the house and his bank account. The furnishings were gaudy and the decorations were a hodgepodge collection of wood carvings, ceremonial weapons, plaster replicas of the Eifel Tower, Big Ben and other landmarks, and more curious things such as oddly colored rocks and seashells or strange handcrafted items that he had never been able to determine their origin.

Reynolds had wanted none of it. His grandfather had not only been a junk aficionado, but a pack rat as well. There were scores of boxes of useless knickknacks and dust collectors along with furniture that was incredibly ugly, and none of the pieces had been real antiques anyway.

So while he had placed an ad for an estate sale, he had the goods of a tawdry garage sale. The people coming by had known it. After half a dozen people had come by to see what he had to offer and left in disgust, Darren had been considering changing his ad in hopes that he'd find people with tastes similar to his grandfather.

Then his next visitor had been Steve Decker. It was hard to believe that this large man that towered over him would be so soft-spoken and intelligently earnest. _You can't always judge a book by its cover, I suppose,_ Darren had thought to himself.

Now he watched the big man playing with the blade, striking at pretend opponents. It was like watching a grown-up kid having the time of his life. While he didn't know much about fighting, it seemed that Mr. Decker had done some training, so he asked him about it.

"Hm? Oh yeah, I had taken a fencing class back in college. I took the class because there was a girl I wanted to meet who was taking it," Steve replied as he continued with the blade.

"Whatever happened?"

"Oh, I just barely passed with a C. I think it was only because I showed up. Still, I'm surprised that I remember anything from back then. I didn't really enjoy it at the time, but I don't seem to be doing too bad now", he said, as he whirled the blade in an elaborate pattern briefly, stomped his foot on the floor, and thrust the blade through the air in front of him with surprising authority.

"Heh. I think I'm even better now than I was then. Maybe I should take that class again," Decker continued wryly.

"What about the girl? Did that work out for you?"

"Yes and no. I ended up marrying her roommate."

Steve swirled the sword one more time, listening to the almost hypnotic sound of the blade cutting through the air as he closed the maneuver with a flourish and ended with a sharp salute. Reynolds half expected Decker to finish with a bow, but he didn't.

"Interesting blade. What do you know about it?" Decker asked.

"Only that my grandfather picked it up in Europe some time back. Nothing else, really."

He paused. "I know it's ugly enough that it used to scare his dog."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, he used to have this small dog and whenever it walked by the sword display, it would bark wildly at it. I don't know what that stuff all over it is, but maybe the dog smelled something it didn't like."

Decker put the blade close to his nose and inhaled.

"Hrmph. Well, I can't tell anything from here. Not that it matters, since I don't have any dogs. That IS weird, though."

"You're telling me", Reynolds replied. "My granddad was obsessed with that damn thing. Always checking on it, never letting anyone touch it. He wouldn't even let me get too close to it when I visited as a kid. This is the first time I've really seen it up close. I don't know what he paid, but it may actually be valuable."

"It's got a nice balance, but I've never seen a material like this." Steve commented. "The style is an epee, which means it could only date as far back as the eighteenth century. Still, I think a sword this distinctive would have some kind of history."

"Like I said, I don't know much about it. Maybe you can find a historian to research it for you."

And that was exactly what Decker planned to do. Decker was fond of telling his wife that only fools would go to garage sales in the vain hope of finding that hidden Picasso. A smart man, he often said, could find a way to make anything in a garage sale become a "Picasso".

And Steve Decker was exactly the kind of man who could do that. He was an art trader and he dealt with a very high end private clientele. While he had sold some pieces to museums, he more often sold to private collectors. What he would do is go around and look for things that might have historical significance, research it to see if it did, embellish its history if it did not, and then pay associates to write articles on them in archeological journals.

He also was a regular contributor to digs and museums, and was well liked among academic circles. As such, they were always willing to accommodate such a proactive colleague by writing up things he acquired. Decker would then cite those articles as evidence of the items historical value to a prospective buyer.

When Steve Decker took his kids to the museum, he always felt a perverse pride in knowing that the histories he created were being told to everyone. When a private buyer purchased a piece from him, he felt an enormous satisfaction in lending someone the belief that they were getting an important piece of history. His wife was fond of saying that he had the scruples of a pirate, but she always smiled when she said it.

It was certainly a more satisfying way of making a living than the machinist job his father had tried to get him to take. He worked his ass off to get his archeological degree, and he always swore he would never end up like his own dad. He had made good on that promise to himself.

So when he saw an estate sale being advertised, naturally he had to go check it out for himself. Nothing in these boxes had been worth looking at until he saw this sword. Much of the items were things of recent manufacture that he would simply not be able to pass off as anything better. He could probably do something with some of the shells, rocks and carvings, but the sword just screamed history at him.

And if it didn't have a history, it certainly would by the time he was ready to sell it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Eternally Retold – Part II**

Despite his desire to work on the sword right away, Decker focused on the other items from the estate sale instead. He rested the blade on the table nearby him, though, as he rifled through the boxes and cataloged various carvings, stones and other artifacts. For the last half hour, though, he had been working to identify a seashell and was not having an easy time of it.

It was probably the unique nature of the shell that appealed to the old man, but it was that same unique nature that made Decker swear under his breath in frustration as he worked on it.

It was too bad that Reynolds hadn't had more information on his grandfather's travels. It would have made indexing the estate so much easier. He wasn't particularly keen on working on this piece, anyway. The sword was so much more captivating….

…but he knew if he started on the sword, he'd delay doing everything else.

The shell was rather large, roughly one and a half times the width of Steven's hand-span, and was slightly concave. The most striking feature of the shell was its abnormally vibrant colors that swirled over the surface of the shell. Most shells that Decker had seen seemed to be slightly muted in color, but this shell must have been plucked from underwater and carefully preserved so that its color wouldn't be bleached by the sun.

_Or it was retouched_, he thought as he brought his adjustable lamp in for a closer look. He couldn't detect any obvious signs of embellishment, even using his magnifying lens.

He set the shell down and leaned back, stretching his aching muscles. He'd been hunched over his desk for a couple of hours now, and knew he'd need to take a break soon. He stood up for a moment, extending his body at a full stretch to get the blood flowing normally again, before sitting down and returning to his task.

_One more hour and then I'll call it a night_, he thought to himself. While he hadn't picked up everything from Reynolds's estate, he did still come away with a few boxes of the more interesting items, and had come home immediately to identify and index them. He had to resist the urge to start with the epee. He suspected that a piece as mysterious as that would occupy a lot of his time, so he felt it was best to start with the quicker items.

But even as he was flipping through his "Conchologist's Bible" to find a match for the pretty shell, he kept glancing back over to the strange blade, compelled by the mute challenge of its mystery. He absentmindedly closed the book and reached for the weapon…

_A weightless sensation…a tightening in his stomach…..freefall….an endless descent into blackness….fire and light then exploded around him….intense heat that penetrated to his core……his flesh should have been seared from his bones but it did not burn….it transformed…..all the while the booming voice of Hephaestus, Lord of the Mountains and God of Blacksmiths echoed around him…_

"_For your crimes against me, I damn you to eternal life of stillness. Thanatos will not take you. Zeus will not pardon you. Your patron, Tartarus has forsaken you. You will remain forever undying. Though your body will be interned within this stone for all eternity, your soul shall ever burn."_

_A final blackness…..and he uttered a final shouting curse before the silence came….._

Decker shook his head as the vision began to fade. He'd never been much of a daydreamer, and the intensity of it was disquieting. It was way too vivid to be a daydream, he decided. It was some kind of (_memory_) hallucination brought on by him working too hard.

He carefully set the sword back down on his worktable, and moved his chair back slightly, as if he were subconsciously afraid to be too close to the blade.

_That's ridiculous_, he thought. _You've just been at this for hours and you really need to stop. You really need to go and get some (revenge) rest._

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't hear his wife, Andrea, come in and approach behind him. He didn't notice her at all until she draped her arms over his shoulders and he felt her breasts pressing gently against his shoulders.

"Oh!' she withdrew quickly. "Jesus, babe, you're all sweaty!"

He did a double take, and then noticed that his shirt _was_ drenched. Just how vivid had that daydream been?

"I didn't even notice", he replied, but now that he had noticed, he felt a tremendous chill as the cool air touched against his moist skin. He shivered.

"You aren't getting sick are you," Andrea asked, playfully leaning away from him.

"No. I don't think so. I guess it was from moving all these boxes around" he lied. The boxes had been moved around hours ago, and he wasn't the type of man who sweated much from moving a few boxes.

She glanced at the sword on his work station.

"That", she began, "is without a doubt, the ugliest blade I have ever seen."

"That's what makes it interesting" Decker replied, in a more defensive tone than he intended.

"Sorry, honey, but that thing looks like it could give you nightmares", she said, leaning forward and kissing him lightly on the cheek.

He chuckled slightly, but it was a forced chuckle devoid of any shared humor. "I suppose so".

"Don't be so grumpy, honey" she admonished him gently, as she put her arms back around his shoulders, tugging his shirt upward slightly. "C'mon. Let's get you upstairs and out of these soaking clothes and into a hot shower."

Smiling now, Richard said "You gonna get my back for me?"

"Sure. The kids are asleep, so I'll get your front too", she replied, grinning mischievously.

Leaving his workroom together, Decker flipped off the lights and the blade lay on the table, a slight pulsating glow emanating from it. In the half-light it emitted, an eye opened within the sword.


	3. Chapter 3

**Eternally Retold – Part III**

"I can say with great certainty that this blade predates the late 17th century" William ("just call me Bill") Coswright mused as he studied the blade intently, absentmindedly running his hand down his peppery beard. His hair was graying at the temples and thinning on top, but despite his age and portly build, he moved with they spry exuberance of a man half his age, particularly when he was excited about something.

The sword, to say the least, excited him greatly. He had it on an examination table and had apparently carelessly brushed aside a number of other items he had been looking at. Given the general disheveled state of his lab, this seemed to be par for the course.

"Predates it? You mean it's a prototype for the epee style?"

"Not necessarily, Steven. The carbon dating tests suggest this blade is substantially old enough that it predates the introduction of the epee style by several centuries."

"That's a fencing blade for sure, though. I would have sworn it was an epee."

"While it is something of a chronological anomaly, it would be reasonable to suggest, at this time, that it may have been a precursor to later adapted styles. The age of the blade suggests that the particular design had been conceived far before our current understanding." Coswright turned the blade over carefully and Decker could see that he was unable to contain his excitement, despite the dry tone of his words.

"Can you really tell how much more?"

"Not precisely. Not with the equipment I have available anyway. I would need to take it to a larger University with more up-to-date facilities in order to get a more exact reading. Offhand I would postulate that the material originates more than five centuries ago, but I would be hesitant to build a theory on it without more precise measurements."

"So you really don't know who made it and when they did it."

"I'm afraid not. I can, however, check with a colleague of mine. He's very learned in ancient weaponry, and he may be able to identify the culture that would have used a material such as that blade seems to be forged from."

Decker frowned. He had known that epee design had developed out of the evolving rules of fencing. The nature of formal fencing duels had eventually coalesced to a few different blade styles that would accommodate the traditional dueling rules. In college, he had stuck with the epee since its design had lent the blade to a more conservative dueling style, and that forthrightness had appealed to him.

The trouble was that the epee hadn't really been seen until relatively recently from a historic perspective. If Coswright's suggestion was correct, this weapon would have serious repercussions on both history and the study of fencing as well. If the blade could be traced back to medieval manufacture, it would mean that this sword had _far_ greater historical significance than he had first assumed.

That, in turn, would mean it had a far greater monetary value than he originally supposed.

On the heels of that, he wondered whether it would really be worth selling such a historically significant item as this sword seemed to be. He could _(use it)_ keep it for himself; perhaps hit the lecture tour…..

But he couldn't let himself get carried away. He said "I really need to get some confirmation on this. How soon do you think you can get in touch with this guy?"

"He does an extraordinary amount of travelling, but I shall consult with him at the soonest possibility. I'll need to take some photographs of the blade as a reference. I advise you to keep it stored safely in the meantime. If we need to examine the blade in person, I'll be sure to inform you."

"That would be fine," Steve replied, and he certainly didn't need to be advised to store it safely.

He went over to reclaim the sword, his mind reeling with the possibilities this information presented. He had to gently nudge Coswright away from the sword, as he had continued to stare in utter fascination at it during their entire talk. He picked it up carefully and…

_His mind swirled with fleeting images and he was overwhelmed with a sense of antiquity. There seemed to be no cohesion to the images at first, they flitted by like vague impressions…..a blade being forged from the ore mined out from a mountain, the fires of the forge flickering with a ghostly light…a feeling of an awareness as the blacksmiths hammers rained down relentlessly to shape it…..one man, struggling against insurmountable odds….a woman dressed all in black stabbing someone from behind…..a man screaming as his face transformed into something reptilian….a young girl in green bowing before him and carrying a large bladed hoop….a dark knight in spiny armor striding purposefully through town, his large blade cutting down everyone he passed, the town aflame, people running…._

_In each image the material of the weapon he held was the same as the epee. Was there a history of blades being made of this material? No, the answer came back to him immediately. The answer was unspoken; it was as if he suddenly knew that they were all either the same sword or weapons comprised from shards of the original._

_Image after image ran through his mind (memory), an endless parade of battles, deaths, transformations to unspeakable things, and all through this the sword was the centerpiece, the focal point, the one constant that drew all these myriad threads and lives together._

_Through the constant stream of this vision, he began to get a sense of just how ancient this blade was, how rich and violent its history had been. Finally, he saw himself at the estate sale, testing it out, slashing at the air, but now he began to get a sense of his own place in its long history; now he began to get a sense of what everything had led up to. _

The enormity of what he was thinking made him tremble and it shook him out of his reverie. He tottered, uncertainly, from the abrupt change in perspective, and for a moment he forgot where he was.

"Are you okay, Steven?" Coswright asked as he grabbed Decker's shoulders to steady him. "You appear to have had a momentary loss of focus."

"I'm okay. I was just…thinking about what you had said" which was true enough. But he was thinking about more than just the dry historical significance of the weapon now. He was thinking it would be ignoble for such a valiant blade to be subjected to being leered at by people with no appreciation for its history.

No, finding a buyer was out. Giving it up to a passionless museum was out. Perhaps he WOULD take it on the lecture circuit and _(annihilate everyone) _share its history in a more personal way. He'd see what Coswright's colleague would be able to tell him. For now, he just wanted to get out of here. He wasn't entirely comfortable with Coswright's fussing, or with his proximity to the sword. He needed to get it back home where he could keep a watchful eye on it.

He'd keep it safe, that was certain.


End file.
